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Got 5a too now, thanks.

Thanks to Jockie for pointing me in the right direction. I had the theme, and seemed to have the first two letters of the five-letter object, but this still left some intractable problems.

Turned out I had a valid but incorrect answer for 38A, a different African fruit which I'd found via Wikipedia (turned out it wasn't in Chambers but there seemed no need to check). My answer started with a K. Still a bit dubious about 'five cells in a straight line' which implies adjacent cells, but ho hum...all done now.

Good fun, enjoyed the wend game

Can someone enlighten me on 7d and 35a please?

7d just looks like a cryptic definition - do we ignore the ellipsis?

35a looks like “O …” is the wordplay. Which I can’t make any sense of

Thanks!

Adeano, 7d wordplay is 1,2,1,1 (O + three abbreviations)
35a is 1,3,1 ... O + 'two wings' (3) + a shortened form of 'of'.

Thanks mattrom

My copy (print) has “the wings” not “two wings”. Typo maybe?

What are the ellipses doing then? They seem entirely superfluous

Adeano, it's a quote from Mendelssohn's Hear My Prayer, which starts "O for the wings, the wings of a dove". Hence the ellipsis.

The BRB defines the three letters as two wings, so you'd be forgiven for thinking that the cluing is a little loose. But the whole clue is clever enough to forgive that, perhaps.

Fair enough, thanks!

Just catching up on this one after my holiday.

I have the whole thing done (incl the endgame) apart from 41a and a couple of parsings. Can't see 41a at all but it seems I dont have to solve it to finish - is that right? All the non erased bit is set by the endgame?

Parsing wise I have an answer for 9 that means more scorched than hardened? Hardened seems a bit of a stretch to me?

Don't understand the wordplay for 21d.

Ta

41a - Def. Is an (Irish) learned man; wordplay a 5-letter greeting, backwards, around the tip (1st letter) of modernist.

21d - wordplay: 1 (about) + 3 (book - OT) + 2 (before, missing its final letter)

I share your reservation about the def for 9d

Thanks Will, all finished now